Why is Louisiana the prison capital of the world?
Fantastic series from Times-Picayune on the state’s prison industry:
The hidden engine behind the state’s well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt.
Objectivity and modern journalism: What can we learn from OWS journalist firings?
At least two journalists were fired after participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests. ONA’s Issues tumblr asks an important question about modern media ethics:
In the digital age, is there a difference between say, retweeting protest signs on Twitter and holding a sign live at the rally? What is the role of objectivity in modern journalism? Did their employers overreact?
What say you?
Source: onaissues
Behind the scenes of “Night Lives”
When asked if he wanted help soliciting ideas and sources for his Night Lives column, Style reporter Dan Zak said, “This is entirely up to you guys. Go wild.”
Working with Katie Rogers on the social media team, we used Zak’s theme for a local summer series to ask our readers directly: “What goes on in Washington while we sleep?” Specifically, we were looking for ideas to help source a feature story each week for an entire summer. We mixed a Twitter call-out using the hashtag #DCNightLives and a Google form to accept submissions. Fast forward two months, and Zak has written a total of nine stories, three of which were sourced from our initial request for readers to help.
Source: washingtonpostinnovations
Apart from the specific business issues feeding those travails — sinking traffic and profits at both — they provided yet another lesson of the Internet age: as news surges on the Web, giant ocean liners like AOL and Yahoo are being outmaneuvered by the speedboats zipping around them, relatively small sites that have passionate audiences and sharply focused information.
Source: The New York Times
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